


Let the World Dream Otherwise

by end_alls



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Gen, M/M, a description of when neku gets shot and the blood and death with it, i call this joshua's fix it fic, shiki and beat are minor characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-11 21:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20160280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/end_alls/pseuds/end_alls
Summary: Sort of a New Game Plus one-shot where Neku plays the last day of the Game again and things change the second time around—memories are different, and Joshua is someone who didn't lie.





	Let the World Dream Otherwise

They waited at Hachiko every day. For a while, at least. Then Beat and Rhyme bowed out because of Beat’s cram school, and eventually, Shiki told him she wouldn’t be coming as often, which eventually faded into hardly ever. She and Eri were trying to start a brand together.

Neku didn’t blame them for moving on with their lives, but he couldn’t.

Months passed. He kept sending messages, he kept waiting, but Joshua never came.

It was nearly the anniversary, and Neku’s mind was still trapped in those three weeks—replaying them over and over in his head, trying to find the points at which things might have diverged into something different. If he’d been a little more patient, a little more open, would Joshua not have left?

If he’d never let Joshua in, could he have pulled the trigger?

In the end, everything happened as it always did. Nothing changed, no one came, and he never got his answers.

The next day, he awoke facedown in the Scramble.

Adrenaline had him on his feet in the space of a breath, and he flung his arm out to catch someone’s shoulder.

It passed right through.

No. No, nononono. The buildings that ringed the giant crosswalk rose around him as his mind threatened to upend its contents into a sea of formless static.

“Shit, Phones…”

Beat’s voice sent a shock of ice through his bones. It was wrong—not all there, like it was coming through a speaker. He hadn’t sounded like that since…

Beat got up next to him. A woman on a bike rode right through them, and Neku stood, rooted to the spot as he watched Beat clench his fading fists. “I’ma hold myself together! I can't fade away now! Rhyme needs me! I ain't goin' up in smoke till I save her!”

Beat turned to him, with that _look_ on his face. The look of someone who’d been given three second chances and didn’t have any left. The look he’d never wanted to see again.

Neku couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this.

“Yo! Neku... I, uh... I don't got much time.”

Neku tried to find the words he’d used that day—_today_—but they wouldn’t come. His eyes just drifted down to the phone he’d pulled from his pocket, onto the text on the display.

Week 3. Day 7.

Why? Why _today?_

This was the end.

This was too late.

Too late to change anything.

Neku’s eyes fell to Beat’s shadow, old rage reigniting. The witch who’d crushed Rhyme between her fingers, waiting right beneath their feet.

But if he attacked Konishi now, would they be able to cross the Shibuya River? Would they even make it to—

He didn’t know. And he wouldn’t let himself think of it.

“We don’t got time to dick around, Phones.” Beat’s voice was soft, urgent. Neku knew where they had to go next. He didn’t know what other choice they had.

“…I know. Let’s get to the Shibuya River.”

All he could do was get this over with.

The CAT graffiti streaked through the tunnels, fresh as the day it was painted. Mocking him.

They found Minamimoto. They found Konishi. She made the bridge. Minamimoto used it. The world was a track, and Neku was locked in a bullet train that wouldn’t stop.

They fought Konishi. Neku let his rage turn him into something she hadn’t seen last time. They got Rhyme back.

Everything was happening in the same succession and sequence, but the question was _why._ He couldn’t tell Beat—not today. Complications like that wouldn’t go over well.

But he wouldn’t have to wait too much longer. Next was Shiki, and he needed to hear her voice right now. Well, it wouldn’t be _her_ voice, would it? She would still look like Eri.

But it was Shiki all the same. And she would be here soon. In a few moments, she would round the corner—miraculously back, but not yet alive. Neku waited on her next words, which would be,

“You mean over here?”

Wrong.

“Yes, just about.”

Neku’s blood ran cold, and he stood there, frozen, as Shiki and _someone else_ rounded the corner. When he saw the person standing beside Shiki, perfectly curled hair mussed from running, he knew why it had been _today._

“Neku! Neku, it’s us!” Shiki called, waving to him. She was giddy with laughter, but Neku wasn’t looking at her.

He was looking at Joshua.

He'd imagined their reunion so many times—a chance to say something more, do something different, but it was all lost in the crackling anger rising in his chest like static volume turned all the way up.

Shiki clasped her hands together, beaming between Neku and Beat. “I’m so glad you guys are okay! We just woke up back in the Scramble, and Joshua said you’d be here and you _were!”_

“Yo Phones… you aight?”

Neku hadn’t broken contact with Joshua, who merely brushed a loose strand of hair behind his ear and smiled, like he was already bored with whatever game he’d decided to play. “Cat got your tongue, Neku?”

“How. Are you _here.”_ He only managed to keep his voice from shaking by talking through his teeth. Joshua had _left._ He hadn’t earned a _do-over._

“My plan worked, clearly.”

"What. Worked." The plan to bring him back here? Damn him all over again, only this time with a proper front row seat?

Joshua readjusted his curls to satisfaction, and took in a breath. What came out was a lie. “I… knew that if I died under Minamimoto's attack, I'd come back as a Player.“ He laughed. That fucking, _fucking_ laugh. “Obviously. Do try to keep up, Neku. There were quite a gaggle of us in the Scramble, actually. The Players were your entry fee, I presume? How _philanthropic_ of you, Neku.”

Neku walked closer toward him, hoping that his voice was doing the daggers in his heart justice. "You're not a Player, Joshua. You never were."

Joshua shot him a glare, like Neku had just interrupted a good story. "I might have entered under unscrupulous circumstances, but as your friend just mentioned,” he gestured to Shiki as if she was complicit, "the both of us have returned—after the two of you defeated the Game Master, I presume?"

“Fuck yeah we did.” Beat ground his foot in his shadow.

"Shiki and I made a pact together,” Joshua went on. “Evidently, she hasn't been restored to life as promised. Neither have I, clearly.”

"What… are you _talking_ about, Joshua?” What the fuck was he playing at? “You were... you were _never_ alive—not since we met."

Joshua’s eyes flickered with something Neku couldn’t nail down, but then it was gone, replaced by one of his cool stares. ”…I _was_ alive, Neku. And now I'm not." He jutted a finger towards Neku's chest. "Because _I_ threw myself in front of an attack meant for _you,”_ he said bitterly. “Because I knew _I_ had a second chance, unlike _you.”_

“A second chance to fuck me over?” Neku spat.

Joshua folded his arms calmly, like he was in the right. "Was blowing myself to pieces not _enough_ for you, Neku? Should I have been erased completely, wiped from existence?"

"I don't have to listen to this bullshit, Joshua,” Neku seethed. Couldn’t Joshua tell he wasn’t buying this puppy dog act? “You're back the same as before—because you _lied_ to me."

"Neku... what happened? What did Joshua do?" Shiki asked empathetically, always so willing to trust.

He conceded that he was at a disadvantage. The others hadn’t remembered anything, but they’d find out soon enough. He just had to back Joshua into a corner he couldn’t weasel his way out of. Neku shot him a glare, a promise that he’d get the truth, and seemed to send a rift through whatever expression Joshua had constructed. For just a moment, he looked undone. Then he averted his gaze, pretending to fiddle with his perfect hair.

“Yo Phones, I dunno what your beef is with prissy kid, but put a stick in it!” Beat said. “We got a Composer to whoop! Once I have his gig, we can fix everythin’!”

Joshua laughed again, and Neku wanted to tear his throat out. “You? Composer?”

“Like you’re any better,” Neku breathed, but Joshua pretended not to hear him.

“Yeah me—Composer!” Beat declared. Neku knew that wasn’t how it went, but fuck, Beat had bested worse odds before.

“…We shouldn't linger,” Joshua said, like he’d just elected himself leader of their party. “Regardless of who’s to replace them, we’ve a Composer to face, haven't we?"

Neku barked out a laugh. If Joshua wasn’t folding yet, then neither was he. “Sure. _Sure._ You know what? Whatever. Let's go."

Kitaniji was next. That would prove things. As they stepped into the Dead God’s Pad, the look on Joshua’s face was a perfectly constructed wonder, and Neku wondered how long he was going to keep this up.

Beat and Shiki were wary of the room, and became visibly unnerved when Joshua casually picked up one of the glasses on the nearest table. “Their secret hideout is a bar?” he said, like he was disappointed somehow. Something else caught his eye. “Tch, is that a _foosball table?”_

“If you’ve got such a problem with the decor,” Neku said bitingly, “why don’t you do something about it?”

Joshua turned to him and knit his eyebrows ever so slightly, like he was trying to focus on something far away.

“Honestly, what’s with you two?” Shiki asked. “I thought you guys were partners last week!”

“An’ you told me prissy kid took a hit from Tabooty for you!” Beat agreed.

Neku’s fists clenched. “He’s a liar. He lied about everything, and he’s lying now—all to get me to go along with another one of his goddamn _Games.”_

Joshua’s eyes narrowed. “I’m a liar, am I?” He punctuated the question by clinking the glass back onto its table. “If you feel so strongly, then surely you must have some form of proof?”

He couldn’t just ask Joshua to give him his memory back. Of course Neku _had_ the memory, but it hadn’t been _returned_ to him—not yet, and asking for it wouldn’t prove anything. It wasn’t like he could show it to the others. “…No. But you do.”

Something dawned on Joshua’s face, like he’d come up with the answer himself. His voice was quiet. _Guilty._ “…Did you remember how you died?”

_What if I am the one who killed you?_

“…No.” If Joshua could play this game, so could he. “I haven’t gotten that one back yet.”

Neku stepped forward to the back of the room to cut the conversation short. Like clockwork, the Conductor materialized in front of them. He turned slowly and eyed each of them in turn, saving Joshua for last. But instead of the reverence, the guilt that should have been on Kitaniji’s face, he only fixed him with the cool look of a snake observing the prey that had stumbled into its den.

“Welcome, Players.”

The conversation pressed onwards, locked in its familiar track, but when Beat made his claim that he would become Composer, Neku caught the edge of Joshua’s mouth twitch like he was trying not to let out one of his goddamn giggles.

Neku tuned it out. This was all taking too long, and Joshua wasn’t going to show his hand until after all this—after they’d fought Kitaniji’s Noise form. But then, without warning, Joshua’s voice cut through the static of Kitaniji’s self-serving speech.

“If you have such unshakeable faith in your Composer, then surely it’s unfathomable that we would ever best him. You, on the other hand, may not fare so well against the four of us. So why not step aside and let him do the hard work, hmm?”

Was this part of some arrangement they’d made, to get to the end faster?

“Prissy kid’s right!” Beat said, raising his fists. “Cut the chatter an’ put your money where your ass is!”

“You are all beyond salvation,” Kitaniji scoffed, cutting his speech short. “But not for long.”

Neku had been so focused on Joshua that he’d forgotten what happened next.

With a flick of his wrist, Kitaniji activated the red skull pin. Instinctively, Neku spun towards Shiki, expecting to see her slip under the Conductor’s control. But her eyes were clear as she gave him a determined nod.

“Mr. Conductor.” Joshua’s voice cut through the unexpected silence. “Did you honestly think you could get away with issuing us non-regulation Player Pins? I made certain Shiki and I divested ourselves of them the moment we woke up.”

“That’s right!” Shiki confidently declared. “There’s no way we’d fall for that!” Even though she certainly had the first time.

Kitaniji found his words before Neku could. “…No matter. You shall all meet your true and final end here, by my hands instead of each other’s.”

Viper sigils swirled around his arms and struck out, phasing all four of them into the battle planes. The crackle of static became the hissing of the giant snake that was Kitaniji’s Noise form, and the battle begun.

Neku hadn’t even had to fight Shiki. The world had skipped a track completely.

“You ready, Neku?” Shiki was inexplicably beside him, in the same battle plane now that they weren’t partners. He looked around. Was Joshua with Beat?

Shiki shrieked as Kitaniji’s enormous tail lashed out towards them, and Neku shot back with an electric psych. There wasn’t time to figure out what the fuck was going on, but Neku promised himself that once they’d finished with the Conductor, he was getting the truth out of Joshua if it killed him.

It felt good, fighting with Shiki. The adrenaline was back, coursing through him like a second bloodstream, psychs rising to answer him as easily as breathing, and he wished he could hate it.

Kitaniji was taking heavy fire from the other plane with Beat and Joshua. The man didn’t have a lot of time left—another hour at most—so why would Joshua take _now_ to get rid of him? It didn’t make any sense.

Before long, his snake form began to crackle away, scale by scale at first, until the rest of him came crumbling down. When they shifted out of the battle plane, he was hunched before them, somehow still upright.

Kitaniji coughed out a cloud of static. He didn’t have long. “Composer…”

This was it. Neku turned to Joshua.

Even though Kitaniji was taller than them, it was as if Joshua was looking down on him. “Looks like your precious Composer didn’t come to save you. Your little stunt with the pins must have been less impressive than you thought.”

Any second now. It had to be coming next. Kitaniji wouldn’t miss this chance.

“The Composer is indeed… infallible. You are right, Player. I failed Him. But I played my Game. As well and as long as I was able.”

“And yet, it still wasn’t good enough,” Joshua said smugly, just as the last of Kitaniji crackled away into silence.

Neku spun on him, fuming. “What the fuck?” Wasn’t that his right hand man? The one who believed in him more than _anyone?_ “Joshua, what the _fuck?”_ His voice pierced quiet room, reverberating off of the slick glass and waterfalls.

“Are you feeling sympathy for our would-be _executioner,_ Neku?” Joshua gestured to the space where someone had been, just seconds before. “Because you would have done well to speak up sooner.”

“That’s not what I’m _fucking_ talking about, Joshua, and you know it.”

Joshua folded his arms, impassive. “Neku, if I may—what, exactly, is your _damage?”_

Neku couldn’t take it any longer. “He was one of your men! Last time you said it was one of the best Games you’ve played! But you just _spat_ in his face!”

Joshua scoffed. “What should I have done? Shaken his hand for allowing me the privilege? And while the two of us might have had some fun early-on in our week, I must admit that the_ Game_ lost some of its luster in the days to follow—particularly the bit where I got blown to pieces.”

All at once, Neku had Joshua’s shirt balled in his fists. “Stop _fucking_ lying to me, Joshua! Why did you bring me here? Why now?!”

Joshua’s eyes were wide as a caged rat’s as he struggled helplessly against Neku’s grip. If he wanted out, all he had to do was use his powers, or change out of his vessel. But still, he struggled like an unruly cat. “Neku, let _go_—” He wouldn't.

Joshua looked to the side, no doubt ready to plead for help from Shiki and Beat, but as he did, his features lit up with confusion. “…Where are we?”

Neku wasn’t going to fall for the obvious ploy at a distraction. “You’re going to tell me why we’re here, and what _fucking_ Game you’re trying to play.”

“Neku, they’re gone—Shiki and Beat—they…”

“I’m not _falling_ for it, Joshua!”

_I thought this warranted a more private audience._

The voice slipped its way through his thoughts to settle in the back of his mind, and everything fell away—everything but the soft light of the figure standing there in the cold darkness of the room where it had all happened.

Joshua’s Composer form stole the breath from Neku’s lungs. It was like beholding the moon as the tides must see it: spectral, all-encompassing light that enveloped their surface—the force that shaped their reality.

“Joshua,” Neku breathed.

“Neku?” A weak voice came from somewhere beside his ear.

_You two have won your Game. You have bested my Conductor. Do you still wish to challenge my rule?_

Two? No, there were three of them. Where were Shiki and Beat?

It didn’t matter. He had to do this alone, because something else had dawned on him.

“All this—you did this to destroy Shibuya for real, didn’t you? Kitaniji—you didn’t even want to listen to what he had to say. You just stood there!”

“Neku.” Joshua’s voice again, coming in sharp through his ears instead of his mind. He nearly moved to take his headphones off, but his fists were still clenched around something. “Let’s have a little decorum.”

As Neku’s head snapped towards the voice, the axis the world turned on snapped in two.

Joshua—_human_ Joshua—was there, glaring at him with sharp, lavender eyes. Neku was still holding his shirt.

He looked back at the Composer, shaped like a negative of Joshua’s shadow. Neku’s grip slipped until his hands dropped uselessly to his sides.

Joshua. Not Joshua. One of them was a reflection peeled off of a mirror—one of them couldn’t be real.

The Composer didn’t give him any more time to figure it out.

_You’ve won your Game, but there is one Entry Fee yet to be returned._

He set his gaze—the apex of his light’s focus—on Joshua.

“My… entry fee?” Joshua’s eyes lolled slightly, as if he was having the same sensation of someone pressing words into the inside of his skull.

_You thought I would not feel your tread, little white mouse, sneaking between the folds of my reality? You slipped my orchestrators’ notice, so I took the liberty of collecting your Entry Fee myself._

“I… don’t understand,” Joshua said. “I’m missing _nothing,”_ he insisted. “What could you have taken?”

_The truth._

Joshua stilled, like he was taking in one last breath before a house of cards came cascading down.

_Why don’t I return the memories I’ve been holding onto?_

Joshua tensed, anticipating the blow, but it was Neku who keeled forward, clutching at a head pierced by static, as the memory began.

_That_ memory.

The one he’d been waiting for.

The one he knew so well.

Neku always registered the sound first. Then he would look at Joshua's smooth, satisfied expression, then down to the gun still smoking in his hand. Over, and over, and over. It reran in his dreams, woke him from sleep.

The shot rang out, reverberating through his ears in a tinny echo, like it always did.

Then the memory shifted, a train clicking onto a different track, and the world changed in an instant—the instant that Neku saw that Joshua was no longer holding the gun.

Something tore away the other boy’s facade, his cool face ripped raw to reveal a deep and unsettled fear that spread from his eyes to the rest of his face like blood in water.

"No!" he screamed, empty hand outstretched to Neku. His eyes flicked to someone behind him, flashing with deliberation.

Neku registered the clatter of the gun on the concrete, the shuffle of retreating footsteps. Joshua twitched as if to follow them, but then Neku's vision began to flicker, and he felt Joshua's hands loop under his arms to slow his fall.

He was laid on the ground, and as Joshua knelt beside him, his muffled head was filled with a panicked, broken voice, unfathomably coming from the person beside him.

"Please, please don't die..." Joshua pleaded over and over again as he dialed a number on his phone. “…Hello? Please, a boy's been shot at the mural in the Udagawa district. Please send help as soon as possible, he’s—theres so much blood and I don't know what to do."

He heard the muffled voice of the first responder. “I—I think it hit his heart—that's where it... oh god..."

The pain was numbed and distant in memory, far away—like it was happening in a dream, to someone else, but he felt the new pressure of Joshua's hands on his chest, wildly patting to try and slow the bleeding. "They're coming, they're coming, just a little longer, just a little longer."

"Wh.. who..." came a weak voice from behind his throat, filling with blood.

"I'm Yoshiy— I'm Joshua. I'm right here." Joshua's hands pulled up one of Neku's, encasing its growing cold in warmth.

"Neku..."

"Neku?" Joshua said quietly, desperately. "Is your name Neku?"

His chin shifted down in a pained nod.

"Neku. I'll tell them. I'll tell the paramedics. All right?"

The last thing he saw, before the memory ended, were the tears rolling down Joshua's face.

Neku's eyes turned, unbearably slow, toward Joshua, who wouldn't reciprocate his gaze.

"If I'd... been a better shot… got him before he could…” His voice was shaking, just like it had in the memory. “If I’d dialed _faster…”_

Joshua wasn’t guilty for killing him, or for everything he’d done as Composer.

He wasn’t Composer.

“He was after me— I’d begun to interfere with the Game, but I thought I could get away with it—” Joshua went on, words spilling from him like blood. “I could have told you to _run,_ but I...” The ground beneath his voice fell out, until there was nothing left but a whisper. “I wasn’t ready to die.”

This wasn’t his Joshua.

Neku knew because this one cried.

“And even after I’d let you die, I thought I could still help,” Joshua sniffed, voice impossibly small. “I thought I could be your friend. I should have known I would fuck it up like I always do.” _What if I am the one who killed you?_ shot through Neku’s chest, leaden with new context. This Joshua thought it was all his fault—and that he’d deserved to die for it.

_Now that the playing field has been leveled, we may begin._ The Composer’s words marched on, unstoppable waves crashing through his head.

_Above all others, you two have been deemed worthy of becoming my Successor._

_Now, you need only deliberate which of you shall Succeed._

Something appeared in Neku’s hand, heavy and cold.

_The victor will be granted strength enough to face Me._

He looked down at the gun.

“That’s why you took it, isn’t it?” Joshua was holding one too, his tears like drops of ink on the dark metal. “The memory? So he could be the one to punish me, once he remembered what I did to him?”

_Life’s little crossroads are often as simple as the pull of a trigger,_ the Composer intoned as Neku’s chest ruptured, old cracks rioting through his heart.

Neku threw his gun down, and the sound echoed like a gunshot of its own.

Joshua watched the gun skid and clatter, and leveled his own to the ground, finger off the trigger. He wiped his face. “…Neku, you’d better pick up that gun.” He kept his voice level, resolution lighting in his chest. He’d damned Neku once and he wasn’t going to do it again.

Neku balled his fists and pressed their heels against his eyes. “Stop it, Joshua—just _stop it.”_

Joshua had planned to become Composer, it was true. All those days watching the Game play out in a world no one else could see, he’d gotten the idea that he could do better—from Mr. H, he now realized. He’d come into the coffee shop, shaken or crying or empty, and Mr. H would tell him he would do something with the cards he’d been dealt, make something of the bottomless longing brewing in his soul.

So that had been the plan. Become Composer, run the Game, and maybe make it so that no one like him got the bright idea of joining it just for kicks. Maybe he could even make it so that no one like him was ever born in the first place.

That had been the plan.

Getting blown up had decidedly not been part of that plan. _That_ little stunt had taken his ace-in-the-hole. It had taken everything.

The power Joshua had had as a living Player might have been enough to take on Shibuya’s Composer, but now he was no more than another cog in the Game’s machine, and there was nothing left for him to do.

Then there was Neku. Three weeks a Player. No psych he couldn’t summon. If anyone could do it, it was him.

“You can change all this, Neku.” Joshua took a step forward. “You can make it right.” He trusted Neku to do it. He knew he could, and a bullet was surely a better way to go than the first time.

Neku coughed out a laugh. “You’re not him and _still_ you manage to be just as fucked.”

Joshua shifted his grip to the barrel of the gun and held it out to Neku. “It’s okay.”

“It’s _not_ okay, dammit!” Neku slapped it away, and the second gun went skidding into the first. “I’m not going to do it! I give up, _I fold!”_

“You seemed willing enough to kill me earlier,” he said quietly.

“I didn’t know—I didn’t know you were—” Neku’s words were being broken by sobs.

The Composer watched on, expressionless. Joshua wondered what he might have looked like if he smiled. Maybe a little like him.

The two of them stared at each other while Neku continued to cry, and as they did, Joshua thought he saw the faintest shift in the Composer’s head, a nod his mind almost didn’t register.

He turned away, and took another step towards Neku. As he closed their distance, he brought his hands to Neku’s, gently drew them away from his face, and hoped that Neku could see the tears reforming in his eyes too.

Joshua didn’t look away from Neku as he called to the being whose gaze still laid heavy on their souls. “Am I to understand that if neither of us Succeed, we both Fail?”

There was a silence like being forced to stand on the edge of a building while someone else sent a text.

_No._

_You’ve made your choices, won your Game fair and square._ For a moment, it felt like someone was idly combing their fingers through the strands of Joshua’s soul. _More or less._

“What happens now?” Joshua asked.

_That is up to you._

Neku blinked the tears from his eyes as the space around him lit with sunlight.

The first thing he saw was Joshua, wearing _his_ headphones. Without thinking, he reached to snatch them back.

Joshua didn’t resist him, just passed them over. _“You’re_ the one who wanted me to hear this.” Neku shoved the headphones back onto his ears as the last chorus rang out. It was a song from one of his favorite artists—one that had come out just a few days before he’d been sent back.

Neku wrenched the headphones down. “Joshua, what happened?” He spun around, taking stock of where they were. Just outside Towa Records. “How’d we get all the way out here?”

“Neku, we’re not _that_ far from Hachiko. We’ll be there soon.”

“But we were just in the River!”

Joshua looked at him like he was a speck of dirt on his shirt. “…Is this some sort of attempt at humor, Neku? I’ve come to understand you’re not usually the type.”

Neku put his hand out to watch it phase through a passerby, but instead it made contact, and the person flashed him a look before briskly continuing on their way.

Someone’s hand wrapped around his, and the touch calmed him like he knew it well. He didn’t pull away. “Neku, do you need a break?” Why was Joshua _holding his hand?_ “We can tell the others we’re running late.”

Neku’s lost eyes drifted around the street, then to Joshua’s hand, until finally landing on his face. This Joshua. “Who are you?”

Oblivious to the weight of the question, Joshua gave him an eye-rolling sigh, then tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. “Oh, did I neglect to introduce myself?” he said brightly, as if this was their first time meeting. “How inconceivably rude of me. You, dear, can call me Joshua. Presently, I’m on my way to meet some friends at Hachiko to celebrate—or at least commemorate—the time we all died, but we’re being delayed because my partner appears to be having some sort of episode.”

“…Partner?”

“Well, you see, that’s the word he and I have decided to use.” Joshua used his free hand to pull out his phone and send off a text.

Pieces of reality were slowly, slowly being fit in their slots as Neku found that there were new memories overlaid on his old, like fresh paint on a mural. Waking up in the Scramble, Joshua laying beside him. As passerby lifted them to their feet, they asked if the two of them had been in a fight, if they’d been fighting. If they needed to call the police. The two of them looked at each other, dazed, until Joshua’s face broke into a smile. A genuine smile, devoid of sarcasm or scorn. A smile that was glad to be alive.

The past year pressed on, and Neku’s memories moved thickly, like he was flipping through a book with cardstock pages. But there, and there, and there, and there, was Joshua. With them. With them at Hachiko, at 104, at Ramen Don.

With Neku, holding his hand.

“What the_ fuck.”_ He shifted out of Joshua’s grip.

“Words, Neku. I need you to use your words.”

“Why did he let us out?” Neku scanned the rooftops, as if he’d find him watching them. “Just like that?”

“…We’ve been over this, Neku: who cares?”

He spun back to Joshua. “What happened to the Game?”

Joshua shrugged.

“Can’t you still see it?”

“No.”

“And that doesn’t _concern_ you?”

He folded his arms and gave a shrug. “Neku, it’s not my problem anymore.”

“How can you just—”

“It’s what I wanted, Neku.” His voice made an odd echo, like his words were being said twice. Neku adjusted his headphones to make sure he wasn’t getting some strange feedback.

“But what if something’s wrong?” he pressed.

“You think we wouldn’t be able to tell? You told me you can feel when a Player drops in, when they come back out. And they do, like clockwork. About one a Game—the way it should be. Neku, there’s _nothing to worry about.”_ It sounded like he was reassuring himself of it too.

“So that’s it, then? He just fixed it, and we’re supposed to be satisfied?” This Composer had been the one who’d set them against each other, knowing full well neither of them could stop bullets, and knowing neither of them could shoot. He’d never intended to let either of them usurp him—Composers seemed to have that in common. But if the rest of what he knew, what he understood about Shibuya’s Composer had been cut-and-pasted into the teenager next to him, then what was left to believe in? “We’re supposed to trust _him?”_

“Maybe,” Joshua tried. “Neku, we’re 16. It’s not _our_ job to make sure the world keeps turning.” Joshua caught his eye. “It’s not our job to check in on him, because we _aren’t_ him. You turned _that_ down for a reason, didn’t you?”

The reason was looking at him, waiting for an answer.

Could things be so simple? He’d spent this year waiting for something to change, but now that it had, what was supposed to fill the gap?

“It’s okay to let it go. To move on.” Joshua took his hand again, then the other. “Remember Sota and Nao?” His curled hair covered his eyes as his thumb stroked Neku’s skin. “What do you think they’d say, if they saw us tarnishing our second chance with doubt?” When he looked back up, his eyes were wet. _“I’d_ imagine Nao would put all the pouting puppies of the world to shame, and I couldn’t stand to make a lady cry.”

Neku gave him a hard look, as inside he felt walls crumbling. This Joshua, the new one in his memories—he still had his thorns, but he never let them break skin. He kept Neku from turning back, waiting for things that would never come. He listened when he talked, he held him steady when he cried, and this Joshua… _this_ Joshua had held him as he died.

This Joshua was real, and here, in every way the old one wasn’t.

It was time to let one of them go.

“…Race you to Hachiko.”

“Wh—_Neku!”_

Neku broke away and started running, but it wasn’t running _away,_ because he knew Joshua was following him.

The two of them ran, shattering the footprints they’d made their first week together. With every step, Neku’s chest grew lighter, and when he started laughing, another voice joined him. That fucking, fucking laugh.

That night, Neku sat alone in his room, the soft blue light of a phone not enough to illuminate the new additions to his walls—a print set Joshua had given him, and their smiles in photos beside Shiki, Rhyme, and Beat’s.

Neku scrolled through his texts, looking for the one-sided thread he’d sent Joshua before the world had changed beneath him.

They were gone. Stolen and replaced, along with the rest of that year.

“Why did you do it?” he whispered to no one but the darkness.

A familiar voice drifted in static, between the channels that built reality, too distant for him to hear.

_I wanted Joshua to be someone who hadn’t hurt you._

**Author's Note:**

> When I first played TWEWY when I was younger, I got way stuck on the final boss and it gave me time to construct this whole theory about Joshua showing up at the end because he WAS alive during Neku’s week, and it had just made him into one of the Players taken as Neku’s entry fee, and like Shiki, it took him a bit to make it to the River with the rest of them. The concept has always intrigued me since then and I wanted to try and write it! Like, where’s the Joshua who literally did not spend Week 2 lying cause I want to meet him
> 
> So this came to fruition as Composer Joshua’s fix it fic, only instead of writing it into a computer to post online he skipped all that and just wrote it into reality and then I wrote it into a computer and it was a hell of a time let me tell you
> 
> The title is from “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
> 
> You can talk to me on twitter at [toppiegames](https://twitter.com/toppiegames)! Thank you for reading!!


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